Okay, so the new Republican budget proposal has come in for a lot of mockery lately, and rightly so. Much has been made of the utter lack of numbers attached to their proposal ((On a quick read-through, though I saw a lot of numbers included, they were all numbers taken from, or referring to, the Democratic budget.)), and I enjoyed Robert Gibbs’ reference to the ‘windmill picture:chart with numbers‘ ratio of the proposal (1:0, for those who are keeping score). Neither of those, though, are what caught my attention when I read through the proposal ((Feel free to check it out for yourself, by the by. It’s a quick read.)).
No, what caught my attention is how consistently, throughout the entire proposal, they refuse to refer to the Democratic Party by its proper name. It’s there in the very first paragraph (the one that’s double size and blue, so you know they mean business), “Democrat Budget” and it continues throughout. It’s even in large print on the front page of their website.
Now here’s the thing. I understand that there’s a place for juvenile mockery. Hell, I’m a blogger, juvenile mockery is kind of what I do. And I understand that pretending not to know how the English language works is a proud and long lasting tradition within the Republican Party … but c’mon, guys. Isn’t this supposed to be a serious policy proposal? Should you have maybe considered that it was neither the time not the place to regress to Junior High?
I’m not sure what the equivalent would be, really . . . Obama releasing a budget with monocles and top hats photoshopped into any photos of republicans? No, maybe there isn’t an equivalent. Good. This isn’t a race to the bottom that the Democratic Party (see?) ought to join.
It’s not a big deal, really. It’s just a silly little tease that Republicans never got tired of. It doesn’t infuriate me or anything, it just reminds me once again that the Republican Party is fundamentally unserious. If you want your ideas to be taken seriously, you present them seriously. It’s striking that in the midst of the greatest financial collapse of my lifetime, in the midst of rampant unemployment, in the midst of the utter disintegration of the financial sector, presenting serious ideas in a serious way is something that this current collection of jokers and fools is frankly unable to do.
It’s sad.
It would be nice to have an opposition party worth a damn.
Please do not comment unless you accept the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people.
I suppose Obama could start calling them “RepubliCANTs.” Which I actually would not mind at all, but then I don’t mind a juvenile politics as long as the policy is right.
Well, like I said, I’m all for juvenile humor, and it wouldn’t bug me too much if George Miller or Robert Gibbs or something made an offhand reference to RepubliCANT’s … but in an official, serious policy proposal? Jesus.
I do like ‘RepubliCANTs’ as the equivalent, though.
—Myca
“Many have called it the road to serfdom.”
Poor Hayek. Speaking of the classical liberal tradition of capitalism in opposition to socialism (whether Soviet or Nazi), he said, “Probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rough rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez-faire capitalism.”
Also, for pure entertainment there’s nothing like comparing the CBO graph on page 5, wherein apparently time began upon the election of Bush, to the Clinton years illustrated here.
I enjoyed how the Republican budget proposal refers to offshore drilling and ANWR drilling as “alternative energy sources” that Democrats are “preventing”. Nice repackaging, guys.
The repackaging is even more obvious in the health care proposal: by sticking the word “access” in, Republican can claim that they too are working toward universal health care. See, they’re not preventing you from getting health insurance, so there’s universal access, which is just like being certain that no matter what happens in your life — turning 25, getting married, having kids, having a longterm illness, getting fired — you’ll actually be able to get health care!
maybe we should be vocal about criticizing the “Republic party budget proposal” and see if they even notice.
I particularly enjoyed this gem: “Will doctors be able to decide the best treatments
for their patients, or will government bureaucrats ration and restrict access to care in an arbitrary fashion?”
Yes, because this was exactly what republicans ask themselves whenever the issue of abortions comes up. In fact, I seem to remember them using this argument to demand exceptions for the health and life of the mother when they banned late term dilation and evacuation. No? They didn’t? Hmmmm, interesting.
Not to mention that most of us already have our health care rationed and restricted by bureaucrats. They just work for the insurance companies, not the government.
chingona,
Yes, exactly! Either you can have rationing done by the private sector bureaucrats, or by the public sector bureaucrats, but there is no way to provide unlimited health care any more than we can provide unlimited amounts of any other good or service. Only in science fiction can we get beyond the problem of scarcity.
However, I think the best way to go on this is to have the government contract with competing private sector companies, but instead of just taking the lowest bid (which creates incentive to deny health care completely), the government should have companies compete to do the best job on long term outcomes. That way there’s an incentive to maximize spending on preventive care (free doctor’s visits, immunizations, screenings, prescription coverage) to reduce the number of people who become ill enough to need the ER.
I used to work for a company that aspired to do this by providing highly inclusive services, like ensuring transportation to and from doctor’s appointments, checking on elderly patients in summer to make sure they had working fans and air conditioning. Unfortunately, they were part of a publicly-traded corporation and thus faced the pressures of minimizing cost (and also because at the time the state and federal governments were so hopped up on the idea that contracting private sector is a cost saving).
I’m not sure the government by itself has built-in incentives for monitoring how well it’s doing. It just seems like there would be a lot of space for people to slack off and be indifferent, since it’s not like you can vote a party into office based on this single issue. Suppose Republicans were really good at maximizing long term health outcomes when they were in charge and Democrats weren’t — I’d still have to set that against all the reasons not to put Republicans in office. If the competition is at a private sector rather than political level, then the government can take the role of monitor and if one company isn’t providing good outcomes, they lose their contract.
I really have trouble understanding what’s so offensive about the word “Democrat” as an adjective. I’m with you on the fact that the party chose “Democratic” as its adjective and therefore that’s the proper term to use. But the level of outrage in the liberal blogosphere (long posts like this one every time a Republican says it) over the term seems to go above and beyond, implying that there’s something bad about “Democrat” beyond “that’s not the grammatical variant we chose.” But I can’t figure out what that badness consists of — I’m not aware of any bad historical associations, etymological misnomerism (a la “Gypsies”), or intrinsic belittling connotations (a la the “people first” rationale for “people with disabilities” rather than “disabled people”). Can someone explain?
It’s just not the right name. If someone always called you by the wrong name, and even after you had politely pointed out to them that it was Alicia, not Alice, or Caroline, not Carol, they kept doing it, wouldn’t you think that was annoying in a particularly juvenile way, even if the name they called you wasn’t inherently offensive and even bore some relation to your actual name?
Exactly right, Chingona.
The thing is, it’s not the “democratic” (adjective) “party” (noun). It’s the “Democratic Party” (proper noun).
Like I said in the post, it’s not a huge deal, it’s just a little like being taunted by a 9th grader, and a reminder that basically, that’s the level they’re operating on.
I mean, it would be like opening up a budget proposal to find it full of ‘your mom’ jokes. Not really offensive, just scary once you realize that “Holy shit, these people want to run the country.”
—Myca
Speaking of Republican “your mom” type jokes…
Better late than never – but there is something about this proposal that really bothers me that I haven’t seen addressed anywhere. I’ve heard a few apologists for the Republicans, who acknowledged that it wasn’t presented properly and was rushed, but excused this by reminding everyone that the opposition party typically never presents a budget of their own. So, I infer, that even though what they presented is crap, we should ignore that because they have put forth the effort (minimal as far as I can tell) to do something the opposition NEVER has done before. (Specifically this was Peggy Noonan’s point on Morning Joe today, but it was raised elsewhere as well.) My response to this is “So?” We are going through a crisis we have never gone through before – the Great Depression was a terrible crisis – but we have a lot more mouths to feed and critical programs and projects to support than we did in the 1930s. If now is not the time to go out on a limb and try doing something different … say … offer a constructive plan of your own rather than just bad mouthing whatever your
mortal enemyoops, competition comes up with, when is? And if you are going to be brave and try something new like actually offering a suggestion, wouldn’t you want it to be your very best effort, not a meaningless bunch of words?
I’m sorry, but whenever anyone raises the “that’s not how we have done it in the past”
excuse, it really raises my hackles.
The funny thing about the name-calling is, when you continually refer to them as Republican’ts, they get real huffy about it after about fifteen minutes. And they still malign the Democratic / Democrat name while they’re doing it!
Furthering the irony, when you point the glaring hypocrisy out to them, then you’re the WATB getting all offended about things inappropriately.
Personally, I will probably be calling them Republican’ts for a long, long time (usually I define it as ’20 years after you arseholes stop abusing the Democratic party’s name’ – which is, effectively, forever). And watching them get their knickers in a twist when people use their own tactics against them.
Beautifully illustrating the point about how you can have your health care rationed either by private sector bureaucrats or by government bureaucrats: Rick Scott, one of the biggest critics of health care reform is the former CEO of a health care company that ousted him after having to pay a settlement of $1.7 billion, the largest fraud settlement in U.S. history at the time, for fraudulent billing of Medicaid and Medicare. He’s now running a string of urgent care clinics catering to uninsured people who have to pay cash, so you can see why universal coverage may not be in his financial interests.
On the other hand, while single-payer often is described as “Medicare for all,” it’s notable that an increasing number of physicians won’t accept Medicare patients because the reimbursement rate is low.
Many of my dad’s patients are on Medicare and he sees it as better than private health insurance because while the rates are low, they’re reliable; you don’t have to devote a couple of staff members to harassing for payment, as one often has to do with private insurers whose motto is, “If we automatically deny, maybe the patient will pay it or the doctor will give up, and we save money.” However, he’s a physician in a rural area where day-to-day costs like renting space and paying employees are relatively low. (His sunk fixed costs are possibly higher than an urban doctor’s because he was determined to bring the most cutting edge technology to these patients, so he’s still paying off various machines.) He’s also in a specialty with mostly middle-aged and elderly people — if he didn’t accept Medicare, he’d lose many existing patients and others would constantly age-out.
The difference that being in a geriatric or semi-geriatric specialty makes is born out by the statistics in the article: “And a 2008 survey by the Texas Medical Association found that while 58 percent of the state’s doctors took new Medicare patients, only 38 percent of primary care doctors did.” Primary care doctors can get plenty of patients who aren’t old enough for Medicare and won’t be for decades. Also, primary care doctors tend to do a lot of annual exams; at the point that a patient has a specific problem, he’ll often demand a referral to a specialist. Medicare doesn’t cover annual physicals, but it does cover the procedures that cover specialists’ bottom lines. I have a cousin in Oklahoma who does internal medicine and cannot afford to take Medicare patients because of how this system is set up.